WHAT DO YOU WANT TO MAKE TODAY?

About the makery

The Makery@Kidzu is Chapel Hill's makerspace for kids of all ages, as part of the Maker Education Initiative. Hands-on activities encourage visitors to experiment, ask questions, and discover new challenges.

Makery News

Kidzu is super stoked for the Great American Solar Eclipse on the 21st! In honor of our excitement, we have created a FREE printable of flashcards for your family to help familiarize yourselves with helpful eclipse lingo.

According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service website, “Pollinators, such as most bees and some birds, bats, and other insects, play a crucial role in flowering plant reproduction and in the production of most fruits and vegetables.”

When kids form an early understanding of the importance of pollinators, it sets them up to lead pollinator-friendly lives. If Kidzu plants the seed of interest with our multitude of exciting Pollinator Week activities, we need your help to continue educating them!

Makery Masterminds construct a colorful car track! It's fully functional for the little green car to travel around on (following the speed limit of course). How creative?! We're very impressed. What fun innovation will they come up with next?

During today's Messy Morning, kids played with pastel paints to create flowers out of recycled materials! We turned pool noodles into flower petals on this rainy Friday. Messy Mornings are every Tuesday - Friday from 10:00-12:30pm!

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

- Benjamin Franklin

This little visitor proves that it's never too early to start learning STEAM'D UP material! She worked well with our two Makery fellows as they figured out how to connect all the circuit boats together to make the Makery glow!

These two visitors connected all of the circuits together to make an electric masterpiece! When art and engineering collide, anything is possible. In this project, these girls not only successfully connected all of the circuits to create a chain of lightbulbs and ringing bells, but they also added motors to paper creations and added them too! Very proud of their hard work, and can't wait to see what else people can create with the circuit boards! Come to Kidzu today and find out!

"Art without engineering is dreaming. Engineering without art is calculating" - Steven Roberts

Lucky for you, at Kidzu we have both! Come explore both art and engineering at any of our weekly programs. These pictures are from our STEAM'D UP program! In STEAM'D UP we use science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics, and design to learn new and exciting things. Here's some photos from the NISE Kit activities!

If you have younger children and want to include them on the STEAM'D UP fun, but you're worried about their young age... we have got you covered! We are also teaching STEAM'D UP to 3 year olds and combining early literacy with Science!

Music is an important part of education and it should never be over-looked. Here at Kidzu we fully support music and it's importance in everyday life! Come join us at one of our several music focused programs at Kidzu. This month we have Music Makers and Fam Jam every week!

With Spring quickly approaching we are getting very excited about our upcoming Spring and Summer programs. To get you excited too, we can take a look at one of our favorite programs from last year. Spin Art! These pictures remind us of colorful Spring and Summer that is just around the corner!

Come to Kidzu and watch your child learn and grow in the Makery by practicing their STEAM'D skills. Science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics, and design are a main focus here and we love to watch kids excel. We are also lucky to have Barbara Tyroler to photograph all the special little moments. Photo creds: Barbara Tyroler

This week in the Makery we are getting hands on with different tools to help us learn about physics. One of our favorite tools is the wind machine. This contraption helps us learn how light things have to be to fly. We are also discovering the use of a parachute and how it can help capture wind to go up and to come back down safely. There are always different experiments going on in the Makery, stop by today and get yours started!

As the weather is starting to get warmer, we are beginning to think back to the Farmers Market. To Market To Market is one of our favorite summer programs and we are counting down the days until the program opens back up. Until then, we still get to celebrate the culinary arts with Kids in the Kitchen! So far this winter we have learned about meals across the world, special lunches, and even edible crafts. We can't wait to see what's up next!

We were so lucky to have been visited by Bill Flick. He has an amazing screen printing skill that he shared with us in the Makery and we still hang up our prints in the office to this day! For future Mix It Up schedules, check out Kidzu's website! https://www.kidzuchildrensmuseum.org/calendar/

We love to see families and friends come together to practice and exercise their skills in the Makery. Today we had families practice their design and drawing skills. Some creations came out abstract and others were designs for the next big invention. Either way, we were glad that people chose the Makery to release their imagination. As Tim Burton would say, "drawing is exercise for the restless imagination." Some come to the Makery and exercise today!

Today we had a wonderful Mix It Up with Andy Berner from the Shimmer Light Festival. He showed us how to create LED constellations using copper tape, bulbs, and batteries. Some children got creative and made their own designs using circuits!

We had such an amazing time this past Saturday with the Alban Elved Dance Company from Wilmington, NC! Both children and parents loved asking questions about the dancers' costumes and playing with the puppets at the end of the show. Thank you for visiting Kidzu, we truly enjoyed "The Suitcase Garden" shadow puppet and dance theater performance!

Join us for a special performance by the Alban Elved Dance Company (Wilmington, NC) of “The Suitcase Garden” on January 22nd from 3-4PM, Free with Museum Admission. The Suitcase Garden is a magical and insightful piece for all ages. The concept of a treasured life is show in thoughtful storytelling through movement, shadows, and lights. The set design, dance, and story draws in the viewers and leaves the audience in awe.

What are your big dreams? Kidzu wants to help you achieve your goals and that all starts with a good education! Come to Kidzu and learn about science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics, and design among some of your closest friends! We like to have fun and we also like to learn, so if you want to build a machine to shoot paper planes across Kidzu or if you want to recreate Vincent Van Gogh's artwork in your own style, Kidzu is the place for you! Comment us what your big dreams are! What do you want to be when you grow up?

It’s basketball season! Do you have a favorite basketball team? At Kidzu there are a lot of different favorite teams, and everyone loves to cheer theirs on. Did you know that Michael Jordan has scored more points in the playoffs than any other player? 5,987 to be exact! That’s more points than I have ever scored. Have you ever played basketball? How many points have you scored?

Hola amigos! Kidzu loves to celebrate different languages and different cultures, and we have been doing this for awhile! These pictures were from our Spanish storytime program in 2013! We are now at a new location and we have a new Book Nook Library, but the language immersion is still the same! Over the years we have added even more programs to Kidzu to help teach new languages in a fun way! One exciting program that we have multiple times every month is Flip4Kids hosted at Kidzu.

Kidzu teams up with Flip4Kids to offer multiple 5-week Spanish immersion classes. Classes include singing, movement, games, arts and crafts! These activities provide a more natural environment for children to listen, learn and speak a new language. Registration takes place through Flip4KidsNC.com.

The first session for 2017 runs on Thursdays, beginning January 12th and concluding February 9th. We hope to see you there!

As you all know North Carolina was hit with a big snowstorm this past weekend. Whether you stayed inside all day or ventured outside to play, let us know! These are some of our favorite snow day activities that are fun for the whole family!

The temperatures may be freezing, but the pictures here were taken when the temperature was nice and warm! These pictures are from Kidical Mass which started in 2008! Kidical Mass is a "legal, safe and FUN bike ride for kids, kids at heart, and their families." Kidzu participated in Kidical Mass and helped to show the kinetics behind bikes in a fun and exciting way! Check out some of these pictures and try to stay warm during these snow day! If you have any fun pictures of you riding your bike, send them to Kidzu. We love to share our members stories!